My interest in genealogy started when I was a child. My dad's mom use to tell me that the family history book had been burned in a fire, but she knew we were related to Daniel Boone. I never forgot that, nor have I ever found the connection haha.
Along with doing genealogy I spend a lot of my time doing photo restorations, namely for victims of Sandy through Care for Sandy, and also of family photos that I add to the books I write on our family history.

20 March 2009

Madness Monday

I would like to start a new meme for those of us researching our ancestors. This is for every Monday. Let's call it Madness Monday for, as Thomas MacEntee put it "mad ancestors or elusive ancestors who drive US mad."

For mad ancestors, maybe you had a black sheep in the family that drove everyone else mad. How about the ancestors that were called mad because of their eccentric personality? Maybe you had an ancestor that lived through the horrors of the old insane asylums. Maybe you have a funny one about an ancestor that just went off on a rampage because someone inflicted temporary insanity. I'm sure you can come up with other stories of madness. The more creative the better.

Now of course there are those ancestors who drive "us made." These are the ones that the family lost contact with. No one knows anything about them or where they disappeared to. Or maybe you know the last part of their lives, but not where it began. Tell us about your ancestors that are a triple layer brick wall. Post what you know, what you've heard from family, and what you suspect may be the truth. But please differentiate each category because what you've been told may not be fact, or what you suspect may not pan out either. So help your readers to help you separate fact from fiction in order to solve your puzzle. Posting about our brick walls may help bring some sanity back to our research.

I would like to ad a bit more to this post, so I hope some of you come back to read this. Ambar was the first person to respond to this post when I launched this and she pointed me to a fabulous fellow genealogist and blogger. I had the previlidge of meeting Miriam Midkiff about two years ago. I try to follow her work, but since I have had to go back to work I often don't get around to reading her posts. I only visit on occation, and I'm sad to say I missed this one. So thank you Ambar for bringing this to my attention.

I could then go on to list other census information (1860, 1870, 1880 Federal Census; he's deceased in 1890 Union Veterans Census) or documents (1862 Enlistment in Co. C, 27th Michigan Infantry; 1866 Civil War Veteran's Pension Index Card; 1880 Detroit City Directory) in which I've found Levi, in chronological order and with details.

4. List positive and negative searches in detail. Obviously, any information in the timeline would be from a positive search. But we could list where we've searched and found no information, or our attempts to trace collateral lines. In this example, I would say the following:

I've attempted to obtain Levi's death record (I know he was deceased by the time the 1890 Union Veteran's Census was taken) in the following places, with no results:

Michigan State Death Records 1867 - 1897 on FamilySearch's Record Search, using Levi as a first name and McClellan, McLellan, McCollum, McClenan, McLennan as surnames. I've also used the "Exact & close match" and "Exact, close & partial" filters. I've searched for deaths for all Levis in Michigan between 1880, when he was last known to be alive, and 1890, as well as all those with the initial L.

I would then go on to tell how I've searched online obituary and cemetery transcriptions for the area.

5. List any possible resources you can think of that you haven't checked. In the above example, I've ordered Levi's Civil War Pension Record, which I hope will provide me with more information. You can also list your suspicions. In the same Army company in which Levi served during the Civil War, there was a man named William J. McCLELLAN. I would then describe my attempts to find out more about this individual, whom I suspect is a brother or cousin to Levi.

I spoke to Miriam by email this week and she is excited about this new meme. At this time though she knew she wouldn't have the time or ability to keep something like this going. To tell you the truth....I hope I can keep this going. Miriam thanks for the input on this and allowing me to use some of your work to get this launch in the right direction. I hope you get to feeling better soon.I'm looking forward to reading all of your posts and putting this together on Monday. Sorry for such short notice on this first one, but I just had one of those quick thoughts that took off like a wild fire.

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About Me

I'm happily married to my wonderful husband of nearly 20 years. We have three beautiful children. My hobbies are genealogy research and quilting. But it doesn't stop there, I also love horseback riding, camping, fishing, gardening, grave yard research, photography and other outdoor activities. Last year my children joined 4H. This year they drug me into it, and now I'm leading the quilting and goat groups. It's a busy but very happy life!

Grave Yard Rabbits

George Scott and Aner (Sackett) Scott

This is one of the oldest photos of my ancestors that I have. Aner Sacket ties my Scott line to the Sackett's that Louis L'Amour used as inpiration in his stories of The Sacketts. I never knew that when I was young and had a profound love for his books and the Sackett's stories. I even began collecting the books before I discovered that I was a discendant of that same family. It's just amazing!